Heidi Range can’t get enough of life in the slow lane. For a decade, from 2001 to 2011, Range was a member of the Sugababes. She sang on six No 1 singles, including Freak Like Me, Round Round and About You Now, and four platinum albums, and performed at Glastonbury.
After Keisha Buchanan, one of the founding members, left the trio in 2009, “it came to a natural end”, Range says, perched on her favourite velvet sofa at her home in Fulham, southwest London — a five-bedroom converted Edwardian laundry factory. “I’d been in the band 11 years. I wanted to start a family and there had been so much drama over that period and line-up changes in the band, it was time to call it a day.”
It has been a long road for Range, 40. She grew up in a semi-detached house in Aintree, Liverpool, and started going to dance classes at the age of three. Her parents divorced when she was seven, and Range’s mother worked all hours to support Range and her sister. “Growing up in Liverpool was amazing, there were so many musical opportunities,” she says. “Every night after school we were at singing, dancing or drama lessons. When I was eight or nine, I joined a children’s road show, of probably thirty kids. We would perform in social clubs and pubs every weekend doing a cabaret show. My idols were Mariah, Whitney, Celine Dion, Gloria Estefan. I’d practise the songs and then in the pubs and clubs we were all like, who’s going to get the Celine solo this week? It’s what we lived and breathed.”
Range scoured album sleeves for the names of managers and producers, and bombarded them with demo tapes. At 15, when she was doing her GCSEs, she got her first break and joined the pop group Atomic Kitten. But she left before they hit the big time, for a solo deal with the producers Mike Stock and Matt Aitken that later fell apart.
In 2001, the same day she had an interview for a bar job in Liverpool, she got a phone call inviting her to an audition in London with Sugababes, who were looking to replace Siobhán Donaghy. Two months later, Range found herself on stage with the group at the MTV awards, aged 18, giving an award to Eminem. “It was literally that fast. It was a whirlwind.”
But it wasn’t all glamour. “It was hard work. We were successful in Europe, so you’d have six weeks of promoting the album here, as soon as that was done, you’d go to Germany, then the next place. And then you’d come back and write the next album. We literally lived out of a suitcase. And we worked 24-7. There were no holidays. It was incredible, but full-on.”
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Her fear of flying didn’t make things easy. “Some days we’d be on four flights. Sometimes I couldn’t get on the plane and we’d have to cancel the show. In the end, we used a tour bus, which we loved. We’d get picked up at a hotel in Shepherds Bush, round the corner from an M&S garage, where we’d get all our snacks, crisps and drinks. Then we’d get our pyjamas on and stay awake all night watching back-to-back episodes of 24. Then we’d go to bed and wake up in Frankfurt or wherever.”
Life couldn’t be more different these days. Range married Alex Partakis, a property developer, in 2016. The couple have two daughters, Aurelia, six, and Athena, two. “I love the mummy bubble. I’ve been to every baby and mother class that exists around here. I love the school run. I love doing play dates at the house.”
In 2015 Range was living in a flat in Parsons Green, southwest London, and Partakis had a flat in Bayswater, west London. The couple were looking for a family home when Partakis came across the former laundry factory. Range was not impressed. “It was a concrete shell. The agent’s CGIs made it look like a bachelor’s loft, and I couldn’t see past that.”
But Partakis kept pushing it. He says: “Heidi said, I’ll consider it but the things I’d really like are a fireplace, a rolltop bath and a chandelier.”
The couple embarked on a two-year renovation. The resulting three-storey, 4,124 sq ft property is a showstopper. To make it seem less like a warehouse Partakis hired an interior designer, Robert Young. They dropped the ceilings on the main floor by 25cm so that it didn’t feel cavernous. They divided the enormous open-plan ground floor (37ft x 32ft) into zones: a kitchen with a triangular marble island by Roundhouse Design; a dining room with a table made from an old Spanish church door, and a playroom that opens on to a courtyard, where the couple laid AstroTurf and shock-absorbing playground pads. “It’s great because if the kids fall over, you wait for the scream, and it never quite comes,” Partakis says.
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The living area features a mirror with a built-in TV, and a glass wall showing Partakis’s red 1972 Ferrari Dino in the garage behind. “People think if you’ve got a car in the living room, it would be quite obvious,” Partakis says. “But actually people come over for coffee and spend 20 minutes in the space before they even realise it’s here. I think because it’s a big room and there’s so much going on, there’s so many other things to draw your attention. And it’s lit at night so it’s sort of like an art installation.”
Dangling above it all is a £6,000 bespoke chandelier from Italy, which took seven workmen to install. It has four additional spotlights above it to add to the sparkle. “My brief to them was fairytale, sparkly and girly,” Range says. The same could be said for Aurelia’s bedroom upstairs, where the walls and furniture are adorned with illustrations from Flower Fairies, Cicely Mary Barker’s classic 1920s children’s books. The pendant light is made from feathers, which Range’s grandma taught her were a good luck charm. “It’s the bedroom I would have had when I was a little girl,” she says.
The couple’s main bedroom suite has his and hers dressing rooms, but Range’s isn’t as crammed with clothes as I’d expected — some of her pop star outfits are in storage and some have been given to charity.
Their art deco bathroom in black and white was inspired by their romantic getaways to Cliveden, in Berkshire, and the Savoy hotel in central London. A chandelier hangs over the rolltop bath. “I don’t use it as much as I thought I would,” Range says. “Alex will say, I’ll run you a bath so you can relax — but when you have two small kids, I’m like, I’m too tired for a bath, I’m going to bed.”
The second floor, a 27ft x 25ft party room with a roof terrace, is more pop star-like. One wall is lined with framed platinum discs and awards. On another is a framed photograph of Range performing at Glastonbury in 2003. “We were terrified because it had always been a rock festival. There were debates on the radio about whether Sugababes should be playing there. We said, oh my God, they’re going to throw bottles at us. But we went on and absolutely loved it.”
Range says she rarely thinks about her pop star days. She doesn’t play her own music or sing her songs around the house, although the dance routines are ingrained into her muscle memory. She still has to pinch herself that she once flew to Los Angeles to work with the songwriter Diane Warren, the queen of the power ballad, who has written for Celine Dion and Whitney Houston. “I do listen to Heart FM and they play Sugababes quite a bit, so our six-year-old gets excited and hums the songs. She tells our younger one, that’s Mummy on the radio. She’s really proud.”
Most pop stars can’t bear to relinquish the spotlight, but Range seems content away from it — even as the original line-up of Sugababes has reformed and is touring. “I’ve always wanted two things in life: to be a singer and to be a mum,” she says, choking up. “Sorry, you’ve got me emotional. I can’t talk about the girls without crying.”
She pauses to compose herself. “So when I was lucky enough to meet Alex and have our girls, I just wanted to immerse myself in that. I’ve been in this amazing little bubble with them. I was so lucky I got to live this career that I’d always dreamt of. And lucky enough financially to be able to step back, because most parents can’t do that.”
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The couple are now selling the house for £5.3 million and looking to move to Surrey, so they can bring up the girls outside the city. But Range is adamant about staying in touch with her working-class roots: she regularly takes her daughters to Liverpool for “chippy teas” and to see her mother, whom she bought a flat for once she became successful. “That was the first place I ever bought. My mum was a single parent and worked really hard. I always said, if I made it, I didn’t want her to struggle any more,” she says, tearing up again.
What does Range miss most about her pop star days? “I miss singing. That’s a passion of mine. Now, as the girls are getting a bit older I’ve started thinking about working again and what I might like to do once the little one goes to school. But because I did live out of a suitcase for so long, I just love being at home. We’ve built this house and we’ve been nesting here together. That’s been my passion.”
